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sirloin steak meal. with blood pudding. (that black bit you see at 10 o’clock.) it seems the lining of the sausage like thing can not be eaten. i ate a bit including the lining before simon told me, and it does make it taste plasticky. haha. the pudding itself tastes salty. can’t say there was any other taste than that. the salt swamped whatever it taste of. the steak was delicious. and smelt lovely when he cooked it. i think the fat is delicious. most people trim it away, but i think that is defeating the taste of it.

earlier this morning i was at the virgin lounge. i like going there.

6.14pm 16.2C dry dark night .amazing that the temp has not dropped much since this afternoon.

i am rather pleased that the ginger and chilli are still the same price in brixton. i think it will always be, but they will change the amount we get according to the season. come winter, we get less, and hopefully we get more come summer. i find it lasts me from 2wks to 3wks. i find they are quite essential in my cooking now.

garlic i can do without, though simon seems to want it in his cooking. he is quite prepared to pay 50p each bulb, ( he just bought 3 bulbs of garlic from our local sainsburys where they are 50p each!) .

when in brixton u can get 4bulbs for 50p. he said the bulbs he buys are large ones, which he wants.

he is so typical of british people, he does not want to be fiddling about with the small cloves. like some people not wanting to eat fish because there are too many bones in them. or preferring chicken breasts because to them life is too short to be bothering with bones. well, i have realised that when people get something in their heads, some strange notions, it is hard to shift them. to me the meat or flesh that surround the bones are the most tasty part of the creature.

he does not realise that smashing the garlic cloves makes it easy to get the skin off. what i find is that the british garlic is so mild that i get no flavour in my cooking from them. that is why i stopped buying them.

recently i went to morrisons hoping to buy their topside beef joint which is £4.97 a kg, which is a ok price,( in brixton u can get this price all the time but maybe it is for cheaper cuts of beef. to me, i cannot tell which cut is better. to me they are all the same, because it is how u cook them that counts.) but it was all sold out, which may turn out to be just as well. because this afternoon i went to our local sainsburys to redeem simon’s shopping, to enter it in my nectar card, when i browse the store and saw 450mg beef pieces for £2. normal price £3.75. i was tempted to buy but i thought i shall just wait till the end of the day when they might be reduced to £1, when i shall buy the lot. haha. there were quite a lot of the packs that is why i suspect it might not be all sold out. anyway when i went there at 7pm, i found only one pack left, and it was marked down to 50p. so i got that. it is nice now and then to have beef slices in the stir fried veg. it gives a nice flavour to the dish. though if i have got more i might make a beef rendang out of it.

i have not suspected this local sainsburys so near me to reduce their food prices. they open till late, 11pm everyday even sundays as they are a convenience store and have different opening hours to the big stores which are governed by sunday shopping hours. since they open so late i always thought they dont reduce their prices. but this pack expires today, so i guess they have to sell it off by today.

people who shop there works in the govt offices nearby so they go for the ready meals. and the hot packs of takeaway lunch packs which seem to be so popular. so maybe raw meat is not so popular. the pricss are higher than the main stores.

whilst waiting, i cooked pork slices in ginger in my rice cooker when the rice is being cooked at the same time. i could substitute sliced beef for this instead of pork and it would turn out just as good.

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bird in the bush.

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this is an easy dish to make. all cooked in the same time and pot as the rice. this one is slices of pork with ginger and soya sauce.

i keep up with news from malaysia by following some blogs there, and this one mentioned gurney restaurant closing, and i googled it and found out that they are planning to build a undersea tunnel from penang to the mainland in that area. it is surprising that the blog owner did not know of this development, he never mentioned it. and he is usually very informative of developments in penang, like the extension of land on the seafront near gurney drive.

and i only found out by accident. it did say it is privately funded , so maybe that is why there is no public consultation which would be required if public money is involved, i suppose. i wonder who are the private firms behind it. they hope to make back their money with a toll. but who would want to use it when there is allready a bridge that is now there. the bridge has a toll fee, so this toll for the tunnel must be as cheap otherwise who would use it? . i fail to see the logic of this tunnel . must be quite rich private developers to finance such an expensive project as an under sea tunnel… even then i would have thought it must affect penangites, and the owners of businesses or land or housing that will be destroyed to accommodate that so surely some kind of public consultation should be required. but no one seem to make a fuss about it… so different from our heathrow airport extension.

the minced beef offer from iceland is great. i bought 4 packs yesterday. it allows me to make hamburgers for so cheaply. seeing all those adverts for hamburgers can make a person start craving them. haha. it even made me crave it, so even myself is not immune to suggestions… just goes to show the power of adverts; and the adverts dont tell the whole story either, showing the complete hamburgers when they are only selling the meat. to get the whole thing u still have to buy the buns, the lettuce, dressings etc. and prepare them.

the actual meat hamburger is really very easy to make from the raw minced beef. and 500mg of it, costing £1 can make a lot of beef patties, and that is just using two thirds of it… plus a third left over for making other dishes, like bolognaise for eg, or just stir fry in fried rice. i like both so it will be a tough decision which one i do finally. perhaps i can have both…

(if u consider the original price of raw minced beef (£2) i can see why a lot of people will just buy the ready made beef patties in that asda advert,as it costs the same; just for the convenience of it, and i can hardly blame them if they do).

i like that krispy kreme , it is from a hole in the wall, outside their shop in holborn. it is the only one in london where u get this. yesterday when i went there there was a long queue, but today, maybe because i went there after 2pm, so away from the office lunch hour, and also this time there were two guys there helping input the order, there was no queue.

i got a code sent to me via email from the company so i get it free. normally it would be £2. it is a new krispy creme that they are introducing one with nutella filling. the filling has the texture of chocolate; and because it is in a box, it kept its shape, and did not get squashed which makes it nicer to eat. last time i got one it was given to me in a paper bag and i squashed it. maybe that was why i did not enjoy that… but this one i like a lot. it is nice once in a while to eat them, esp if it is free. i am glad i dont have a sweet tooth, so i can resist the temptation. they are really doughnuts with sweet filling inside. it really is amazing how much they have caught on, i heard recently that a big private company have bought the krispy creme company for $1.35billion. if u buy a dozen assorted ones they are about £11. so these nutella ones cost about double the usual price. but the filling really does make it more enjoyable. what i would think is that it might make people go buy nutella instead and just spread it on their toast. haha.

i have not eaten nutella before and so this one gave me an idea of what it tastes of, and surprisingly it tastes very much like what chocolate should taste of. so u can get the taste of chocolate without paying the high cost of chocolates. i think if anything, this doughnut will bring more customers to nutella.

i have enjoyed eating hamburgers where the meat is pink in the inside. but now i see a council in portsmouth winning a court case against a burger place for serving a pink in the middle burger.

it seems the council wants them to specify how the burger meat is produced so that the meat is not contaminated.

a rare steak is allowed because only the outside is contaminated and the germs are killed on cooking, so it is ok to serve a steak rare.

it just means more cost to get someone to work out the paper work. it is no wonder eating out is so expensive because of all these petty bureaucracy… though i suppose u could say it will stop fly by nighters serving unhygienic food to unsuspecting customers.

but dont complain when the food prices are jacked up, and it costs so much to eat out. it just means anyone willing to go into this food business must allow for the extra costs in complying to all the food rules and laws that abound and all that cost means the customer have to foot the bill. now u know why it costs so much to eat out.

the owners sound like they are polish, so maybe there is some kind of politics in there somewhere. the local shops may be complaining as they provide competition.

once u taste beef that is medium rare, it is difficult to go back to eating well cooked beef.

i have just been to the charing cross branch and eaten their hamburger. i chosed the double cheeseburger, and boy is that the truth. there were two 6oz hamburgers in there between two round buns, and it was so high, i could not get my hands round it to eat it like a mouthful. i have to cut it up in pieces with the cutlery they provide. all i have to pay is 25p, and this one cost £12.50. so quite worthwhile to order. it was so good, i could not help telling the chap sitting on the next table to me to order it. i was craving hamburger and this one filled that crave completely.

i went there earlier, at about 12.30pm, but the line was a bit long, and since i am not a office worker with a limited time for lunch, i decided i shall avoid the crowd and go into the charing cross library nearby.

by the time i finished there and went back, there was hardly any queue and it was only near to 2pm, when the office workers rush is over.

the food came very quick too. all in all a very pleasant experience. and very nice of them to do this.

i am in the library now, having just used the library computer to access my email and get a email from byron , a burger company, who are giving away 25p burgers on 6th oct as a promotion for their charity giving free lunch to children, or something like that. i got notice of it via londonist who send me a daily email about things happening in london, but i found an article in the evening standard online. rather nice of them, is this a form of capitalism in action, dont you think? not exactly free food, but close enough.

i am writing off line as the library wifi is not safe enough for chrome to log on.

i had some problems getting the library to print out the email. the first time it did not print anything (@20p a print) and the library assistant have to come to the computer to see what i did … i found out that the email have 3pages and i did not specify which page i want printed , that explained why the page came out blank.

the email contained a square picture code on page 3. that i have to present to the burger joint to get my 25p burger. so it came to 40p all told that is the cost to me because of a repeat print. ah well, such is life. haha. its still cheaper than having my own printer at home. the ink is very expensive and tend to dry out… anyway, if u want a 25p burger just get yourself registered. and get yourself down to a byron burger joint on 6oct.

quite a warm day, and sunny. i went to tanners hill, deptford, se8, near new cross station, to buy the pie. i first heard of it mentioned here, in the londonist, where it got high praise. so much so that i felt compelled to try it. i think steak and kidney pie is one of the best things about english foods, and to be able to buy one that is praised as the best of its kind and within easy reach of my place is great. i ate one cold, and even unheated, it was delicious, with such alot of beef meat in it, (usually they bulk it out with carrots and potatoes but not these, just beef and kidney).

it delighted me. i so often get pies with hardly any meat in them, and costing so much more than the £2 each.

the price is a surprise, so good value. i bought 2 at first, and after eating one, i went back and bought another 2 more. haha. this time i bought a steak and mushroom pie, just to see what it is like. they do chicken too, and maybe i shall buy one next time; but steak is what i really like because it is not easy to find steak at such a good price. in fact, next time i go i must ask them if they sell the beef, because it would make really good curry. at first on the outside it looked like it sold only fresh meat, no pies. and it was only when i went in and saw through the doorway a table with pies laid out on it, that it sells pies. i think i would never have gone to this place if i have not read of it, it is not on the high street but down a side road. and there are no prices written out. very low key , they obviously rely on word of mouth, but they should really advertise it more with signs and stuff. still i am a great fan of them now, and can only say do go, and buy it, it is what pies should be , but never are.